A letter on politics

Alison Jolly

Abstract

Before the First World War, politicians of the great powers blustered at each other, believing they defended their national interests. Today they are remembered for provoking the deaths of 15 million people. Before WWII, Germany and Japan each felt they had been deprived of their rightful place in the world. That attitude spawned their expansionist régimes. Seventy million people died. In Copenhagen today politicians from rich and poor nations claim their right to spew the planet’s carbon into our atmosphere. There is a difference: the negotiators today in Copenhagen already know that if they fail, they will be responsible not for a few millions but for hundreds of millions of deaths, and misery for billions. Madagascar is one of many places that people will die from the changing climate. The last decade averaged 2 true cyclones each year, not counting 2-4 more large tropical storms. Science is unclear whether storms and cyclones will become more frequent, but all predictions agree that warming sea temperatures will make them more intense and destructive. And as people of Madagascar’s east and west recover from cyclones Fanele, Eric and Jade, drought ravages the south — no one is sure how the rains will change, only that change is coming. Politicians within Madagascar have little say in the negotiations of Copenhagen, but they have the same problem of balancing short-term advantage over long-term gain. Do they want to spend their time only in political manoeuvers for their parties’ gain? If so, they will be remembered for letting people go hungry and allowing the destruction of Madagascar’s extraordinary natural heritage. Rosewood export from the national parks and lemur sale as bushmeat are theft from the people of Madagascar, and from the people’s future. Even hungry farmers look to the future. A farmer must be at the last extremity before he or she eats the seed they have saved for next year’s planting. Can the politicians of Madagascar and the wider world look beyond this year, beyond this round of elections or negotiations? Do they wish to be remembered as the mothers and fathers who protected their countries’ people and the world’s heritage of nature, or else like politicians of Europe before the great World Wars, as murderers of the future?